Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile: Claro Chile and the Innovation Center put their 5G Lab to the test
Claro Chile and the Innovation Center of the Catholic University held the first public account of their Lab Claro-UC 5G Innovation Center , a hub for innovation, technology and the future, with the aim of developing multi-industry solutions and applications with the main actors of the innovation ecosystem: researchers and students, entrepreneurs and companies from different productive sectors.
“Today, a year after the inauguration of this 5G Campus, located in the Innovation Center of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, we have been able to be part of four experiences that clearly represent how the new network and the 4.0 economy will revolutionize the sectors productive, how the academy will have new tools and the new capacity that users will be able to acquire through technology ” , highlighted the Undersecretary of Telecommunications, Francisco Moreno.
“We have deployed a robust 22 Campus 5G network throughout 6 regions of Chile and we seek to continue adding more academic spaces throughout the country to continue expanding the horizons of development in these true poles. Research around 5G, a network that will be protagonist for the professionals of tomorrow ” , added Moreno.
In its first year of operation, the 5G Lab has promoted four deployment axes: the development of Research and Development (R&D) projects by UC academics and researchers who have sought to apply the benefits of the fifth generation in industrial environments. ; the Sin Límites program , where students from various disciplines and degrees address future challenges around this technology; Collaborative Directories , where entrepreneurs and experts focused on accelerating startups look for what businesses may arise from the new technology and, finally, the transmission of knowledge through instances such as seminars and talks on the subject.
“We are very happy with the great collaborative work that we have developed together with the UC Innovation Center, generating knowledge and new solutions based on 5G that have been applied in various industries. This first year we have promoted a strong approach with companies from different sectors and generating instances with startups to evaluate the feasibility of being part of our product portfolio to promote technology adoption in different environments, which will be key to the development of the digital economy ” , explains Felipe Gómez, Director of Development and Innovation at Claro Chile.
The executive highlighted the contribution of strategic partners such as Nokia and Qualcomm, which have participated in financial year 2021 by delivering key technology for the adoption of this new generation of mobile networks.
For his part, Pedro Bouchon, UC vice-rector for Research, explained that “from the Lab we push the testing of 5G technology applications throughout the innovation ecosystem, strongly linking academia, the private and public sectors and society. civil. This first year, we generated a community around the proofs of concept and innovative solutions, which we hope will grow in the productive world and become new business models, as well as improvements in the efficiency of processes in the different industries that contribute to the competitiveness of our country ” .
5G demos
To account for these advances, various live demonstrations of this technology were carried out in the celebration of the first anniversary of Lab 5G. With the participation of the Undersecretary of Telecommunications, Francisco Moreno; the vice-rector of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Pedro Bouchon; the executive director of the UC Innovation Center, Ramón Molina, and the director of Development and Innovation of Claro Chile, Felipe Gómez.
In the hands of Meik Labs, an immersive experience was put to the test by digitizing the space of a mining site through ground inspection, aerial photogrammetric surveys and engineering information through plans. This solution was possible to implement thanks to the implementation of the 2nd floor of the UC Innovation Center building of 5G antennas and the necessary equipment to deliver connectivity to the Meiklabs test, provided by Nokia.
“From the beginning we supported the creation of the UC Innovation Center, offering a high-performance 5G network as the tool that enables the development of relevant use cases to increase the productivity of companies and the quality of life of Chilean citizens, like the ones we have seen here today. 5G is already a reality, at Nokia we have deployed 72 5G networks and we have a total of 204 contracts globally. We are very pleased to be part of this project and we will continue to support innovation projects in Chile, ” said Rubén Morón, Country Manager for Nokia in Chile.
Real wear, an extended reality helmet with Qualcomm technology, with which it was possible to carry out a guided process of disassembling a flowmeter -sensor that measures the amount of flow that passes through a tube- in 5 minutes. In this way, through its screen, the user was able to follow all the instructions required in the dismantling process, as well as allowing the streaming of what was displayed on the helmet and the sending of photographs to validate the final result.
Santiago Fontan Balestra, Sales Director of Qualcomm International, Inc. Argentina, explains that “we are happy to collaborate with the Pontificia Universidad Católica y Claro in this Project, as we are helping to enable the next generation of mobile pioneers and put the technology capabilities ” .
AR piano, through an Oculus Quest 2 helmet, visitors were able to participate in an augmented reality experience in which they were able to see their hands and instructions to play a piano. In it, a graphical interface mounted on the piano was shown, allowing to select different musical pieces and see in real time which notes should be played.
In addition, two autonomous driving robots were presented that traveled the same tracks but with different latencies in their control, since one was connected to the 4G network and the other to 5G. In this way, the effects of enabling a low latency communications network on remote robotics and autonomous vehicle networks could be demonstrated.